714. The Big Difference Between Childfree Women And Childfree Men

714.   The Big Difference Between Intrinsically Childfree Women And Childfree Men

A frequent topic discussed in groups or forums of childfree people is the difficulty to find a childfree partner.  

While all childfree people are different from more average people, unfortunately the biological differences between the genders seem to be more pronounced in the childfree than in instotypicals.   (I call those people, whose instinctivity suffices to facilitate the survival of the species, instotypicals.   Thus, all instotypicals are breeders, but being a breeder does not make someone automatically an instotypical)

The following is about intrinsically childfree people by inclination, not about breeders manqué including those by political considerations.

1.  Instotypical women (IW) are driven by an instinctive urge to breed.   Breeding is a function of their body, it requires no use of the brain.  Animals are breeding successfully, unless they have become extinct.
Therefore IWs identify with their body, their focus of self-improvement is upon the body, their self-worth depends upon their looks.   They consider their body as an asset, the improvement of their looks as an investment to find the man with good genes to sire healthy offspring and the man, who can provide for them.   For IW, they are often not the same.
 
Once IW have children, they become not only emotionally attached to them but even addicted to care for them. 
One consequence is their willingness to accept self-sacrifice, which could even be called self-abuse.  They choose the agony of giving birth, health risks, plus dull, unpleasant, abhorrent and annoying activities for years.   By accepting the chores of not only regular cleaning but even the changing of stinking diapers, they make themselves the slaves of selfish, very incompetent and irrational beings, who for many years remain unfit for any intellectually rewarding interaction.   IW accept to be the slaves of pre-human beings, which are more like animals.  
Once they have made these pre-human beings the significant center of their life, once the father is legally bound to pay, the IW often looses interest in the person of the man.  For her, he has become a purse, a bank account, a handyman, a taxi driver.  

2.  Instotypical men (IM) are driven by an instinctive urge to sire.   As the breeding outcome thereof cannot be predicted, the recurrent dishomeostasis does not depend on the breeding success.   The instinctive urge to sire is an urge to have as many offspring with as many healthy women as are available, it does not imply any attachment to the women nor any inclination to take part in raising the brood.   If an IM does, it is the price he is willing to pay to be subscribed to the recurrent access to the same woman's body.   Some men prefer this over the repeated hunting for new victims for siring attempts.    

3.  A childfree woman (CFW), who is not a breeder manqué, is this by lacking the breeding instinct.   This makes a lot of the body focused behavior of the IW obsolete or at least unimportant.  To find a companion to share cultural and intellectual activities, a woman needs other traits and qualities than good looks.  
It is the absence of the dominant instinctivity, which allows childfree women to recognize breeding as an unnecessary burden to refuse it.

4. In contrast to the CFW, childfree men (CFM) cannot be explained or defined by the absence of a breeding instinct, which even male breeders do not have.   For any man, being the provider of children adds a heavy burden upon his life, especially if the number of the children restricts the mother to be only a housewife.    Wishing to avoid as much as possible of the stress of the professional rat race, and additionally disliking the deficit of benefits from being with a woman, who is an overburdened mother, is independent of the magnitude of a man's instinctivity.  
Therefore remaining childfree and finding a CFW is an expression of a general male wish to avoid for himself the disadvantages of raising children. 


This leads to a sad discrepancy: 

The CFW want men, who appreciate their non-physical, cognitive qualities.   But many CFM are attracted by the same siring instinct to the same female breeders as had been those, who have succumbed to breeding.    While they remain CFM, they feel an urge to sire, yet they want the guaranty of no success.   They just do not want to be themselves involved in breeding. 
CFM feel inclined to strive for the same stupid attributes of masculinity, like fitness, muscles, strength, ambition, success, assets, competition.  Thus they appear attractive to the provider seeking breeders, whom they do not want.   They are ignorant, that what attracts breeders often does not interest or even repulse the CFW.   They know nothing except their own struggle with their own siring instinct.   They are not aware, that only the absence of the breeding instinct makes women really CFW.

CFW have a problem finding a suitable match.   CFM are oblivious of what distinguishes CFW from wanna-be breeders, what CFW need and want and how to recognize those truly not afflicted by the breeding instinct.    CFM often get involved with breeders temporarily in the skin of a CFW. 

684. What Partner Seeking People Can Learn From Monozygotic Twins

684.  What Partner Seeking People Can Learn From Monozygotic Twins

In men's profiles, again and again I am reading statements, which express the preference for someone more different then alike.   Implicitly or explicitly expressed is the belief, that the attraction of opposites were the best strategy for finding a match and the apprehension of getting bored with a clone of the own person. 

But there is living evidence for the benefits of being like two birds of a feather:  

Monozygotic twins raised by the same people are as much alike as can be.   Do they get bored with each other?   I very much doubt it, based upon what I have been hearing and reading about the especially close and strong lifelong bond of such twins.  

This apprehension of getting bored is also not logical.
 

If one person enjoys something of personal interest like an art exhibition or a theater play alone, sharing such activities does not make them less interesting, to the contrary, the sharing enhances the joy.   And when both contribute initiatives for more such activities, it could even reduce the risk of boredom. 
Comparing notes, pointing out observations, sharing thoughts and agreeing can be at least as interesting, rewarding and fascinating as controversial debates.  But agreement enhances harmony, while controversy may lead to antagonism and disruption.

If anything leads to boredom, it is the consequence of those compromises, by which one partner reluctantly participates in the other's favorite activities.   If a man in this situation is content to pursue his interests instead with his buddies, not even missing the sharing with his mate, then this indicates the degrading attitude, that a woman is only a body to be used and not a significant companion.    
Thus, whenever a man puts emphasis on the attraction of opposites, this is a red flag,  It could indicate a man prone to objectify women.  

The ideal prerequisite for long term happiness is the combination of being mentally as similar as possible, but (in the case of straight couples) having complementary bodies.   If any attraction of opposites is acceptable, it has to be restricted to only concerning physical and visible aspects.   

677. Suitable Means Nothing Less Than Not-Unsuitable

677.   Suitable Means Nothing Less Than Not-Unsuitable

Again and again I see on dating sites calculations and concepts, which indicate the implicit assumption, that someone could be more or less a match by nothing more than only the additive presence or absence of shared and welcome traits.        

This is a very hazardous fallacy.    Relationships fail predominantly, when one partner's attributes, traits, attitudes, values or habits cause the other to feel and experience harm or at least discomfort and displeasure.    In such cases, both partners are mutually unsuitable.   

Therefore differences in how much someone is suitable are only of any significance, when there is no unsuitability at all.     

 

As a metaphor, the most delicious ingredients can be mixed elaborately into a perfect treat.  But one single addition of a foul tasting or toxic ingredient suffices to make it entirely unpalatable or dangerous.  

It is the same with a partner.   A man could have dozens of traits and attributes making him appear as nearly perfect and as a dream come true.  But one unbearable and intolerable attribute can suffice to nevertheless make the relationship toxic and devastating beyond endurance.   

 

If accidentally there is salt instead of sugar in a cup of coffee, it can be thrown out with a shrug of a shoulder and new coffee brewed.   But if there is accidentally salt in the tiramisu or chocolate cake, which had required a lot of work to make, the disappointment is much bigger.  

The same goes with a man.   The more a man seems to be perfect in many other aspects, the more it is painful, when his hurting behavior cannot be stopped.   Avoiding to be hurt by a man by avoiding him entirely is easy, as long as in all other aspects he is merely just acceptable.   Yet he is acceptable for a harmonious relationship, as long as there is no unsuitability.  

 

Suitability can be additive depending upon how much is shared.   Unsuitability is not additive.   One aspect of unsuitability is enough to define the entire unsuitability.  

If there is only a lot of salt in the coffee, it cannot be drunk.   If there is only arsenic in it, it is not to be drunk.   Salt and arsenic together would not make it any less drinkable.    The behavioral consequences of not being able to drink the coffee are the same, even when the reasons are different.

One unsuitability suffices to make a man unacceptable, no matter what he is otherwise.    For me, a man with children is unsuitable, a man with religious beliefs is unsuitable, and a man with both religion and children cannot be less suitable than any one with only one of these unsuitabilities. 

Therefore what defines someone as a match and as a suitable partner is the absence of unsuitable attributes of any kind.   What these are, varies individually.  

Such unsuitable attributes can be

• cognitive, when mental traits like attitudes and beliefs elicit disrespect, repugnance or repulsion.
• behavioral, when habits and instinctive urges cause harm and hurting
• incongruency of significance, when the need for a partner does not fit with what is offered and expected reciprocally
• situational, when circumstances impede fulfilling the other's needs.

I am not looking for a dream partner or for someone perfect.   Instead I am looking for someone, who is in no aspect unsuitable for me.   

This means the absence of anything, which impedes me from respecting and appreciating him as a mindmate and he is someone, who by his own inclinations and decision does nothing, which I experience as harm and by which I feel hurt.      

655. The Strategy Of The Self-Arranged Commitment Project

655.   The Strategy Of The Self-Arranged Commitment Project

Sometimes men give me the feedback, that they disagree with my searching strategy as is outlined throughout this blog.    This disagreement is a mixture of lacking comprehension and of the error of considering the instinct induced focus as better than a more rational but eclectic and uncommon approach.  

But my approach and my strategy are not even my invention, very learned people have similar ideas.   I already mentioned Epstein's love project in entries 29 and 385.

Further information can be found on his website in many publications and interviews, some of it about his love project and about arranged marriages:
http://drrobertepstein.com/index.php/media-coverage

This short video gives a good introductory overview:
http://www.sandiego6.com/san-diego-living/this-week/tuesday/Science-of-Love-139242443.html



1.  The self-arranged commitment project.
 
When more than a decade ago I first read about Robert Epstein's love project, I perceived this as a very good representation of my own previously more vague inclinations and wishes.  At that time I had already implicitly developed the paradigm of my own matching strategy, but the awareness for this was still emerging.   I immediately recognized my own inclinations, convictions and attitudes in Epstein's idea and I fully agree with his principles.  

My own strategy for a 'self arranged commitment' differs only in details.        

• A signature under a contract is only of legal significance.   If there is not enough trust between two persons to feel bound by a verbal agreement, then there is no base to attempt a relationship. 
• Paying for counseling is too much of a financial burden.   In the case that not each partner is able to comfortably afford a fair share of this burden, it is not such a good idea to require financial sacrifices, which may jeopardize the project. 
• I consider a very careful choice of the suitable match as even more important than it seemed to Epstein.   He admits to not even have read most of the over 1000 emails he got after the announcement of his project.  Instead he chose for his first attempt a woman, whom he met in an airplane.  

As far as I can make a guess, Epstein developed his love project as a consequence of his psychological research and as a remedy against being misled by his own inclinations.   To me the idea of the self-arranged commitment comes as a most natural expression of my own needs.   It is the result of full awareness of my own inclinations.


2.  The influence of instinctivity.

Unfortunately, Epstein's love project is spontaneously counterintuitive to men, who react strongly to the effects of female bodies upon their instincts.   It needs some intelligence and theory of mind to comprehend its wisdom.

The self-arranged commitment project can be chosen for disparate reasons, which are connected with my recurrent topic, that individual differences in the power of instinctivity have a very strong impact upon personality, attitudes, perception, decisions and behavior.
   
Men with high instinctivity cannot help but experience instinctive reactions when interacting with possible mates.   These reactions blur and distort rational long-term reasoning.   

This works both ways.   Such instincts can cause

• strong physical attraction and fast infatuation.    
• strong frustration, when the expected infatuation is not experienced immediately.   

Both effects impede rational decision and a wise choice of a mate.  


The choice of the self-arranged commitment project is influenced by a man's instinctivity and by the quality of his theory of mind: 

• The stronger a man's instinctivity, the less he is prone to comprehend and accept my strategy of the self-arranged-commitment project.  Only a man with an exceptionally good theory of mind and ability for the long-term anticipation is able to think independently and to act rationally in spite of what his instincts urge him to and in spite of the distortion by infatuation.   
• The less physical infatuation at the beginning of a relationship, the better the chances of rational choices and reasonable behavior and long-term happiness.   Only a man with low instinctivity and high predominance of cognition can meet a possible match without any expectation for strong physical attraction and without immediate infatuation.  Only he has a sufficiently clear mind to consider long-term compatibility and to welcome a self-arranged-commitment project.   

Men's instinctivity causes often an asymmetrical constellation.    While men get immediately infatuated with bodies, women can also get infatuated and blurred in their decision, but in a very different way.   Women can get infatuated with the prospect of and hope for a safe haven, a reliable companion, a trustworthy lifelong partner, a mindmate, in short with the fulfillment of all their cognitive relationship needs.  
The asymmetry dooms the relationship.   When the man's infatuation wears out, he discovers the reality of how much or how little both have in common.   The woman, who enters a relationship for the purpose of getting her non-physical needs met, discovers after a while, that she was infatuated with a delusion, and there was no safe haven, only a man wishing to get access to a female body.   The man gets tired of the woman and the woman gets hurt.  

Starting a relationship as a self-arranged-commitment project is a method to avoid such an asymmetry.   The less a man is infatuated, when he agrees to build a relationship, the better are the woman's chances to be offered realistic prospects and no delusions.   

Therefore a self-arranged commitment project is for me a method to reduce the risk of getting hurt. 


3.  My inclinations towards the self-arranged commitment project.

I have never experienced or expected infatuation, immediate love or love at first sight or anything of this kind at the first encounter with someone, neither online nor previously offline.  It seemed natural to me to let love and attachment grow slowly.   Reciprocally meeting each other's basic criteria was to me always the starting point for the cooperation to create long-term attachment.    

I mistook this for the logical way how things were usually going.   For a long time I had the wrong impression, that most people were more rational and cognitive than they really are.   I thought that passion was an invention of novelists and that those men, who were driven be passion to annoy and to harm women, were only a sick and deranged minority.  

Only when learning about evolutionary biology and when the internet allowed me access to many public personal accounts of the experiences of real people, I understood the sad reality of the huge power of instincts over the majority of men.  It was really disheartening. 

I was not really astonished, that when Epstein created a project of what to me had always been sensible, reasonable and logical, it was perceived as an extraordinary and very novel project and stirred a lot of publicity in the media.      


4.  The scarcity of men inclined towards the self-arranged commitment project.

There is nothing wrong with being a nobody.   There is nothing beneficial in being famous.   Fame is merely the situation of being known by notoriety, admired, despised, envied or hated by lots of haphazard and insignificant persons.  

There is only one disadvantage of being a nobody.   There is no way of getting publicity, when there is a need to find something scare, rare and hidden.

Unfortunately there are very few men sharing Epstein's wisdom.  When I am in contact with men, whom I consider as hopeful candidates for a self-arranged-commitment project, they usually do not understand my intentions.   While hoping for a positive response, I am getting rejected as a consequence of their incomprehension. 
There are certainly a few men out there somewhere, who are innately suitable and motivated for a self-arranged commitment project.  Some may share this inclination, some may have been convinced by Epstein.   

Somewhere out there, there is one who would be as happy to find me as I were happy to find him.   But I just do not succeed to reach him.  
 
Epstein had one big advantage:   As the then publisher of Psychology Today, he had sufficient publicity, when he announced his love project on their homepage.    He got over a 1000 emails as a reaction, many from interested women.  

I am looking for and offering nearly the same as Epstein did.   But I am a nobody, I am unable to get sufficient publicity.  This blog is implicitly an elaborated synopsis of my self-arranged commitment project.   But writing 653 blog entries appearing in google searches in more than two and a half years has not given me even a tiny fraction of the resonance, which Epstein had in a few days. 

Life is not a novel.   If it were, a journalist from a widely read web site would discover this blog and help me to get the publicity needed to enable my mindmate to find me.   Or someone would start a matchmaking site especially for people interested in self-arranged projects of any kind and I could find my mindmate there.   

653. Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

653.   Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

With whom to spend the rest of the life together is a very significant decision.  Mistakes can have very grave, long lasting, irreversible and extreme painful consequences.   

In entries 174, 176, 178 and 185 I developed a model for the process of getting to know each other.    The decision phase in entry 174 can be further divided.  
The preliminary phase is the phase of corresponding and talking over the phone to find out, if there is enough in common to rationally justify a personal meeting, the main decision phase follows the first meeting and includes further meetings.  

The duration of a phase includes a certain number x of hours of time spent by focusing the attention upon interacting by telephone, correspondence and even pondering over the prospects.   These x hours can be distributed over many months of only a short time daily or even weekly, or they can be spent with priority during a short period of time of intensive and extensive interacting.     
 

The more someone is an individual and not average, the more difficult it is to find someone suitable.  Therefore these phases, especially the preliminary phase, are usually repeated with several or even many different possible matches, before two persons find each other suitable enough for considering and attempting a relationship.   

There are principally two different approaches towards how to proceed:

The reciprocal absolute-cooperative approach: 

Goal:
 

This approach has the goal of finding just the one partner, who is minimally suitable for a relationship, but also sufficiently suitable to impede any further interest in others.   In this case, the most rational approach is to focus on only one intensive and extensive contact with one person at a time and to postpone considering and evaluating other contacts to after the possible failure.

Who:
 

The absolute approach suits and attracts those persons, who know themselves and their own needs well enough.  They are aware of what they are looking for in a partner and what they cannot accept.  

The absolute-cooperative approach only works, when two persons choose it as an option.  

Cooperation and consistency:
 

This approach is a form of cooperation.  Both share the task of discovering common ground and affinity and welcome finding them.   Every consent about any topic benefits both in getting them nearer to their goal, no matter if it is a trait, attitude, interest, habit, attribute.   The situation is transparent and to a certain degree reliable for both of them.   

No matter if the consent is more like tolerance by indifference or more like enthusiasm, as long as it is a consent between two persons, who want the consent, both can reasonably expect the other to be consistent.   Consent will not be easily converted into a reason for rejection out of the blue. 

Trust:
 

Growing reliable consent creates trust along with the growing probability of being compatible.   This reinforces and motivates to open up and to share more personal matters, which are also important for compatibility.   

Reinforcement:
 

Trust, consistency and discovering affinity and common ground reinforce the reasons for focusing upon exclusively this one possible match.  This then again reinforces the creation of trust and further affinity.

Emotional risk:
 

Every contact is of course emotionally risky.   But the risk of the absolute-cooperative approach is not so much the risk of an incomprehensible rejection.   It is mainly the risk of ending a contact by agreement because of discovering clearly defined lacking or intolerable traits and attributes.  By accepting someone's having rationally comprehensible criteria, an agreement of not meeting the criteria is not even really a rejection but the consent to be not compatible.  


The reciprocal relative-competitive approach:

Goal:
 

This approach has the goal of finding the best of all possible matches, not just one good match.   Nobody can really know, who is the best unless after having scrutinized every one of them.   As this cannot be done, every good match is considered with the doubt, that there could be a better match yet to be found.    The rational procedure for this goal is to prolong any phase and to explore and to compare many possible matches simultaneously.

Who:
 

The relative approach is often an expression of immaturity, ignorance, lacking self-awareness and having a limited theory of mind.   Some people enter the contact with haphazard persons without a clue about how little there is in common nor what they really want.  Some are attracted by looks, but beyond this they are not able to find out, what they do or do not want, unless and until they are confronted with it.  They only experience incompatibility by noticing the contrast in comparison with someone else.   They need to compare to find out, whom they want.  
Being vaguely discontented but not knowing why leads to a process of recurrently and endlessly probing, discarding and moving on attempting to find someone better.  They continue like this, as long as they are unable to decide, what and who is good enough for them.  

Whenever one person chooses the relative-competitive approach, the other has no choice to get anything else if preferred.

Competition and no consistency:
 

In the relative-competitive approach, there is not consistency.   Consent about a topic is not a reliable step forward towards a wider common ground, consent is only temporary and easily annihilated onesidedly, as soon as someone else appears to be better.   Being accepted or rejected does not depend primarily upon one's own traits and attributes, instead it depends at least as much upon those of competitors.   

These competitors are unknown powers in the background.   Ignoring both their number as well as their traits and attributes makes losing the other's consent by being compared with a successful competitor an unpredictable event coming out of the blue.    

When people are competing to get a job, they do know, that they are competing and they have some idea, what is required.  They have a clue about the qualities for being the best   This gives them a chance to attempt appearing as the best.

The person in the situation of competing against unknown competitors for an appealing partner is in a much less advantageous situation.   Due to not knowing anything about a potential match, there is no way to influence the comparison with others nor to attempt to appear being the best.  Who is perceived as better is determined by the lottery of who happens to be there to be compared.  

Trust:
 

When the rejection can come at any moment out of the blue and cannot be predicted, there is no reliable consistency.   This impedes trust.  The relative-competitive approach keeps contacts superficial and less personal.   The possibility of a rejection out of the blue does not motivate anybody to open up and get more personal.   

Reinforcement: 
 

The fragility of a contact adds to the maintenance of some mental distance.    Being prepared for a pending rejection at any time makes the own relative-competitive approach the most reasonable behavior.   If the rejection by the preference for someone else can happen at any time, then it is beneficial to also have other contacts to fall back upon.   The fragility and superficiality of the relative-competitive approach also reinforce it by preventing trust and closeness.   
 
Emotional risk. 
 

The main emotional risk is the unpredictability of a onesided incomprehensible rejection at any moment and for unknown reasons.   Having such a rejection imposed upon oneself without having any part in causing it is much more painful than an end by agreement.


When the situation is asymmetrical, then the person following or preferring the absolute-cooperative approach is the one having all the disadvantages.   

Jerks play games and pretend to follow also the absolute-cooperative approach, until they find the someone to prefer and then they reject the flabbergasted other out of the blue.  

When the situation is clear, the person with a preference for the absolute-cooperative approach has two options, either to recoil directly or to go along while also continuing to search, but not to find someone better but someone, who shares the preference for this approach.     

The relative-competitive approach is probably enhanced or rather aggravated by the social norm of the lifestyle in capitalistic countries, where people are encouraged and brainwashed towards consuming and discarding, towards the greed of wanting always more and always something better.    

When people are made to buy a better car, a better computer and a better cell phone every few months or years instead of using things until they break, then it is not really astonishing, that they generalize this consumers' attitude also to human relations. 

640. Interesting Research Results

640.   Interesting Research Results

I have been mentioning before, that in my understanding people's conscious attitudes are influenced or determined by their instinctive urges and that as a result of evolution, men and women differ in what is predominant as their strongest instinctive urge.  
If men are driven by strong urges, then towards using a female body to restore sexual homeostasis.   If women are driven by strong urges, then towards breeding and getting attached to children.

The following source seems to supply some evidence:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130213214620.htm

"Mothers are more negative about relationship quality, relationship with partner, relationship maintenance and happiness with relationship/partner than childless women. However, mothers are significantly happier with life that any other group, indicating that children could perhaps be the primary source of happiness for women.

Mothers are also almost twice more likely than fathers to say that their child/ren are the most important person in their life. Fathers are much more likely than mothers to value their partners as the most important person."

The study also backs up my own notion of the importance of sharing and of the preference for the match criteria of being likeminded and similar.

"The survey also revealed how sharing values, a faith, beliefs or interests with a partner is very highly regarded and participants expressed disappointment when the everyday experiences of life could not be shared.

"Holding things in common was seen by participants as a key "connector" in the couple relationship,""

596. Commodification And Learning By Feedback - The Spell Checker Metaphor

596.   Commodification And Learning By Feedback - The Spell Checker Metaphor


While people can often improve their relationships by feedback and constructive criticism, those men, who commodify women are unfortunately out of the reach of improvement by feedback. 

The spell checker metaphor:

Using a spell checker when writing a text in a foreign language helps to find mistakes and to learn better spelling.   Without the spell checker, the same mistakes are repeated and become a habit.   

A spell checker offers to its user the choice to change his spelling, whenever and if he agrees to do so.  Ignoring the errors indicated by the spell checker can have the unfavorable consequences of reactions to bad spelling.   

The benefits of using a spell checker as a learning aid are limited by preconditions.   It is only a valuable tool to improve the spelling competence, if it is reliable by only indicating real mistakes and by finding (nearly) all of them.  

1.  Learning from a spell checker does not work, when there are too many false positives.   When the spell checker uses a wrong language on a text, this leads to so many false positives, that the real mistakes are lost between the many apparent mistakes.  

2.  Learning from a spell checker does not work, when there are too many mistakes.  
When someone's knowledge of a language is only minimal and below the threshold for writing correct text, too many mistakes are discouraging and beyond the capacity to memorize all the corrections. 

3.  Relying on a spell checker, which overlooks mistakes, is worse than not using one.  Whatever is not indicated as an error is wrongly assumed and reinforced as correct.   This leads to learning mistakes.  


Feedback as a behavior checker:

Being influenced (entry 594) by the feedback of the partner concerning the preferred behaviors and especially concerning what hurting, annoying and disturbing behaviors need to be avoided is an important method and part of the learning process for improving a relationship. 
The partner's feedback indicates inappropriate behaviors.  Accepting feedback can be seen as using a behavior checker.   Feedback offers the choice to change the behavior in the case of agreement with the necessity to do so.    Ignoring and rejecting proffered feedback can have the unfavorable consequences of strong reactions to the persistent criticized behaviors.

The benefits of feedback as a tool to improve a relationship are limited by preconditions.   Feedback is reliable, when it is welcome by the recipient as justified and when both partners agree, that and how the criticized behaviors need to be changed.   

1.  Learning from feedback does not work, when there are too many false positives of unjustified and irrational criticisms.   When a commodifying man's entitlement delusion causes him to have absurd expectations and make inappropriate demands on a woman, which she refuses to comply and submit to, then his criticizing her for not serving his delusion is not justified.   Under an overwhelming pressure of his absurd and unwarranted blames and reproaches she has no chance to ever discover and consider those few instances of justified feedback.   

2.  Learning from feedback does not work, when there are too many justified reasons for criticism.   When a man has very many hurting, annoying and disturbing habits and attitudes, then getting too much justified feedback is more than what he can cope with.  This can happen, when someone is immature and ignorant, or when he is suddenly exposed to new expectations after having been considered as unfit for learning by feedback as in 3.

By the reaction of blocking and denial to overwhelming criticism he avoids any change.  But giving too much justified feedback is in such a situation not the woman's fault.    Her feeling hurt and annoyed is real and shifting the suffering upon her to spare him is not an improvement for them both as a couple, only a redistribution of the burden.   Her refraining from giving justified feedback is not a solution.  

Whenever there is a persistent conflict, because there is only the choice between him suffering from her feedback or her suffering from his behavior, they are a mismatch and not suitable for each other.    

3.  Not giving feedback reinforces habits, even though they are hurting or disturbing to others.   This happens, when someone gets the fool's or insane's license, not being taken for serious but instead considered as a weirdo and too deranged to change.  While he himself remains ignorant of his unfavorable reputation as a hopeless and incorrigible case, he believes to be respected and accepted.  He misinterprets the absence of feedback as if his behavior were experienced by others as correct and appropriate.  

4.  Learning by feedback does not work without agreement concerning the justification of the feedback.  
Making a relationship work requires a process of adapting to each other.   But not all people are suitable to reciprocally adapt.   When people's basic attitudes and values are too disparate, they cannot agree concerning which behaviors are acceptable and which are not and thus they also cannot agree, which feedback is justified.  They cannot adapt to each other, they are a mismatch and doomed to accumulate more and more unresolvable conflicts.  

5.  Feedback does not work, unless it is understood by the recipient as it was meant by the sender.   When feedback is incomprehensible or distorted by dysfunctional communication (entry 595), it does not help to learn and does not lead to improvements..  

The commodifying men's fallacy:

Spell checkers compare written text with an internal dictionary of correct words.  This dictionary represents the generally agreed upon correct spelling of a language.  Some spell checkers allow people to enter additional own words as correct into this dictionary.     Any fault entered as correct into the dictionary would no longer be found by the spell checker.  But entering faults is of course a completely irrational method of avoiding to notice the own errors by distorting the spell checker.

Yet the method applied by commodifying men, when handling women's feedback is as if someone would adjust the spell checker by feeding mistakes into the dictionary, until all the mistakes are hidden.   Text thus only appearing as if correct is then believed it to really be correct. 

But the dictionary of correct behaviors is in the woman's head, outside the commodifying man's control.  Feedback concerning his outrageous behavior and his absurd attitude towards women does not elicit the appropriate reaction of his correcting his behavior. Instead he believes the dictionary of correct behaviors in the woman's mind to be faulty.  He reacts with attempts to fix the woman, which for him means to make her modify her allegedly wrong feedback and the faulty concept of correct behaviors causing this feedback.   

Whenever by any method, threat, coercion, exhaustion or domination he succeeds to make her discontinue her feedback, he interprets this as having successfully fixed the woman.  

By this mechanism, men commodifying women are out to the reach of being influenced.    

550. The Irrationality Of Diatribes In Personal Interactions

550.   The Irrationality Of Diatribes In Personal Interactions

Whenever I am the recipient of a diatribe or angry rant, I am puzzled about why people bother to approach me in this way, even though this is not a method to gain anything.   The last good example is a comment to entry 549.   

http://dictionary.reference.com

Diatribe
noun:  a bitter, sharply abusive denunciation, attack, or criticism:
Rant
noun:  ranting, extravagant, or violent declamation.
noun:  a ranting utterance.

The following is not about the benefits of people sharing the same grievances against any third party while being in harmony with each other, nor is it about someone finding relief by telling grievances to a sympathetic friend.   Many important social and political movements have been initiated by a few justified diatribes. 

It is about the irrationality of sending me diatribes by email or blog comments.    Such diatribes are as irrational as is the man's behavior in Watzlawick's story:

A man wants to hang a painting. He has the nail, but not the hammer. Therefore it occurs to him to go over to the neighbor and ask him to lend him his hammer. But at this point, doubt sets in. What if he doesn’t want to lend me the hammer? Yesterday he barely spoke to me. Maybe he was in a hurry. Or, perhaps, he holds something against me. But why? I didn’t do anything to him. If he would ask me to lend him something, I would, at once. How can he refuse to lend me his hammer? People like him make other people’s life miserable. Worst, he thinks that I need him because he has a hammer. This is got to stop ! And suddenly the guy runs to the neighbor’s door, rings, and before letting him say anything, he screams: “You can keep your hammer, you bastard.” (Paul Watzlawick, “The Situation Is Hopeless But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness”)

There are many reasons, why any man and I are not suitable to have any beneficial contact.   The rational reaction of such a man is to zap without wasting any further thoughts on me, when while reading this blog or my profile on a matchmaking site he notices such reasons.
In the case of doubt, a friendly question invites a friendly clarification.    Any provocation on my part is not intended and it is no invitation to hostile arguments.    There is no rational reason to express anger by attacking me with diatribes.  

The irrationality of sending diatribes indicates, that the sender has some problems, concerning both the cause of his anger and his hostility when coping with it:

1.  Entitlement and grandiosity delusion. 
A man feels entitled to get anything and this is justified for him by nothing more than his wish to have it and/or he believes himself to be god's gift to women, who cannot have a valid reason to reject him.    Therefore he considers the choice of a partner only justified by his own selection or rejection. Being rejected is not acceptable to him.   Even anticipated rejection due to my clearly expressed criteria is for such a man a reason to be angry.   A woman's disagreement with his grandiosity is also a reason to be angry. 
2.  Displaced anger.   Something in my text triggers anger, which is caused by his own experiences and has nothing to do with my person.   This something can be either a provocation by any real attribute of mine or it can be something misunderstood and misinterpreted.   

3.  Paradoxical coping with the anger.   The devaluation of what is not available as in the fable of the fox and the sour grapes are a valid coping strategy as part of realistic resignation.    Attacking someone with the declarations of devaluation by email is absurd.    

When people write emails, they enhance the probability of getting a reply by showing as much appreciation for the recipient as they can do sincerely.   In the case of intended manipulation, appreciation is insincerely exaggerated.   

An email of devaluations is supplying the recipient with reasons not to reply and not to communicate.   Therefore there is no reason to ever bother to write devaluing emails, while not writing has the same effect without wasting time.  


The diatribe comment on entry 549 gives examples.   His (assuming the commenter to be a man) attacks me for being German.   This indicates displaced anger about Germany or German culture or maybe some German individual.   Now he attacks me for being German in spite of my explicit declaration of not identifying with being German.

I cannot know his level of formal education.   But his attack on my valuing a university degree makes it obvious, that he has none but does not accept this as a reason to be not suitable for me.  

He calls me 'dogmatic, unscientific, irrational, dictating, intolerant, sexist, emotional, arrogant'.   These being obviously all unacceptable attributes in his opinion, I can fully agree with him that any woman, whom he subjectively perceives as having such attributes, is not suitable for him, no matter who and how she really is.   I have no problem with being perceived as not suitable by an unknown commenter.   But his bothering to write a comment, which forfeits any communication, is weird.  


Expressing and sending a diatribe is a distorted method of counterproductive communication.    Constructive communication motivates the recipient to reciprocate an interaction perceived as beneficial.   Diatribes create antipathy for the hostile sender, who presents himself as someone to be avoided, not as someone to interact with.    Everybody writing and sending diatribes just wastes his own time and gains nothing.  

1.  One possible interpretation of diatribes is to see them as related to real life bullying.    

Based upon his physical strength, a man can sometimes succeed to get his will by intimidation.  A woman cringing under outbursts of anger does not dare to resist.   The woman suffers and is driven away by this bullying.    

Men with long term thinking and wisdom learn, that bullying gets them nowhere and nothing.   But when they are only learning short term direct effects, they are mislead to learn, that expressing anger is a successful method to get their will.    Bullies misinterpret the success of their outburst of anger as if this were a method of influencing the victim's thinking.   They mistake enforced apparent acquiescence with agreement and they believe in their power to obtain agreement by expressing anger.         

As a result of this distorted learning these men are oblivious of the limited reach of the weapon of anger.   Anger and aggression only work in direct contact, when the intimidation triggers spontaneous fear, elicited not in accordance with the probability of a physical attack but by the mere possibility.    

Therefore expressing anger at the target by email is the futile attempt of distance bullying.    Due to not eliciting fear, this does not work.   Diatribes are the consequence of a man's overestimation of the power of his anger without physical intimidation.   

2.  Diatribes are an indication of an asymmetrical attitude to women and of the intention and purpose of a relationship for getting advantages by commodification.   A man pursuing a symmetrical relationship appreciates the information of any woman's needs and preferences for his own evaluation of possible symmetry.   Finding out that he cannot give her, what she needs, is not a reason to get angry and even less to send a diatribe.   For him it is a reason to accept incompatibility.  

543. The Symmetry Or Asymmetry Of Men's Basic Attitude Determines Their Behavior Towards Women

543.   The Symmetry Or Asymmetry Of Men's Basic Attitude Determines Their Behavior Towards Women

In my reply to a comment on entry 540, I explained, how I can only prevent to be harmed and abused in a relationship by the reciprocal conscious choice of a partner, who realistically can expect to get his needs met without hurting or bullying me.   

I have outlined extensively in this blog, how I need to be treated and what treatment and behaviors are not acceptable.    This serves the purpose of enabling any interested man to check reciprocal suitability without hurting.   

This leads on to the problem of predicting the probability of being hurt as early as possible during any contact.    It is futile and even ridiculous to ask any man the direct question, if he commodifies and abuses women.    No man ever would reply in the affirmative.   Some men are not even aware of their own hidden real attitude.   What they believe to be justifiable behavior is experienced as abuse by women.

A man's real basic attitude towards women is more reliably inferred from his behavior.  Basic attitudes are usually congruent with the strength and predominance of instinctive needs and urges.   These attitudes are invisible or hidden, but the behavior is an observable expression of the attitudes.  

Men's basic attitudes towards women are either symmetrical or asymmetrical.  

A symmetrical attitude can be expected, when a man's innate needs are balanced, when his conscious non-physical needs for intellectual and emotional intimacy, activities and a safe haven shared with a bonded companion are at least as strong as his physical instinctive needs for homeostasis.    

Experiencing only or predominantly those instinctive needs leads to the asymmetry of the basic attitude.   

1.   Asymmetrical basic attitude.   

Commodification, objectification and peripherisation are asymmetrical varieties of the basic attitude, they all determine men to hurt and abuse women.  
These attitudes are expressed by the secondary attitude of implicit or explicit claims of entitlement, which are inappropriate, because they aim at acquiring onesided benefits only for these men.   Feeling entitled to benefits not otherwise available they also feel entitled to hurting and harming behaviors as the method to acquire the benefits.   
1.1.  In the case of the entitlement delusion, abusers are oblivious, that what they believe to be their entitlement, is considered and perceived as outrageous and preposterous by others.    Therefore it does not even occur to them to hide their entitlement delusion, to the contrary they are surprised, when the women disagree.    They get angry and aggressive bullies and they consider any woman as defective and flawed, who refuses to let them have, what they feel entitled to get.   They are the least hazard to women by being easily recognizable.
1.2.  The entitlement is combined with the awareness, that others disagree.   This makes them a hazard, because they use manipulations, tricks and pretense to get, what they feel entitled to but which is otherwise not available.   

1.3.   Sometimes men are not aware, that their behavior expresses entitlement.   Their fallacy of believing to be in agreement with a woman's symmetrical expectations makes them also a hazard.   More about this follows below.

2.  Symmetrical basic attitude.

Egalitarianism and bonded monogamy are varieties of a symmetrical basic attitude, which determines a man to have more reasons to protect a woman against being hurt and harmed than to inflict it upon them.    
These basic attitudes are expressed by secondary attitudes, as are for example responsibility, consideration, commitment as including obligations, caring, reliability, predictability, trustworthiness.    People often declare these attitudes explicitly as forming their value system, which they identify with.   But even without being consciously chosen, these secondary attitude determine specific behaviors.    


Unfortunately, things are more complicated.     The behavior is usually a fairly good indication of and congruent with the real basic attitude.   
But any verbal declaration of secondary attitudes cannot be relied upon, because they are influenced considerably by social, cultural and educational influences.   Someone's mere claim to be responsible does not imply, that he really knows, what responsibility means and what behavior expresses responsibility.      

As a consequence, when a man agrees with or even offers proactively to behave according to specific secondary attitudes, this is far from a guarantee for a woman to really be treated according to her expectations.   
In the case, that the man is not purposefully manipulating her, this is caused by the man using words without comprehending their full and correct meaning, which eludes him due to his lacking the corresponding basic attitude.   The man agrees with something, because he knows it to be expected from him or as the condition for being accepted.     But he agrees to give, what he has misunderstood as the meaning of the word, not what the woman expects by using the same word.   


Commitment is an example.     

Entitlement and feeling obligations are mutually exclusive.    When someone feels entitled to a benefit, this means he feels no obligation to give something back.  Whenever someone already considers something as his property or his due, he sees no logical reason to earn or acquire it by a deal.
Accepting an obligation is the contrary, it is the recognition of another person's entitlement to get benefits in return for what is given as part of a deal.

1.   A man with an asymmetrical basic attitude misunderstands commitment as a method of establishing entitlement by ascertaining his control over a woman.    This serves to get benefits from the woman at his convenience.  

2.   A man with a symmetrical basic attitude agrees on a deal concerning the benefits of the relationship for the woman as equally valid as his own.   He accepts commitment as including the obligation to fulfill his part of the deal in return for the benefits he gets.   

Both use the same word, commitment, but they do not mean the same.    When a man gets subjectively committed by feeling entitled and a woman subjectively gets committed with the expectations of a man being bound by obligations towards her, this will lead to serious suffering for the woman.   


The symmetry or asymmetry of the basic attitude depends on fairly stable innate traits as are the instinctive and the intellectual needs.  As long as men succeed to enforce getting benefits from commodification, they have no logical reason to give up their privileges.    Therefore it is rather improbably that a man's asymmetrical attitude changes into a symmetrical one.   

Appropriate treatment of a woman comes only natural, when it is grounded in a man's symmetrical basic attitude, while a man with an asymmetrical attitude is innately oblivious of how to treat a woman without hurting her.   

Such a man has a serious problem even when he is so much attracted to a specific woman, that this motivates him to attempt to treat her how she wants to be treated as the price for being accepted.    

He has not clue, how to behave, unless he gets a recipe for every situation.   He experiences, that every behavior, which is logical for him under the premise of his entitlement, fails and is rejected by someone, who expects him to fulfill obligations.

Whenever he is ignorant of the suitable recipe, he is prone to relapse to the inappropriate hurting behavior derived from his alleged entitlement.   
This causes a very fragile situation:  The woman is not respected as an equal, she is only a commodity temporarily treated as if she were appreciated and respected.  
This can only last, as long as this gives him subjectively more benefits then bullying her to usurp his alleged entitlement to benefits.   

She cannot be happy, because happiness requires to be perceived as an equal partner in a symmetrical relationship.  But due to his relapses she is fully aware of the indignation and degradation of not really being appreciated and respected, even though his attempts create the intermittent appearance as if. 

A woman's happiness requires a man's symmetrical basic attitude.     

542. The Fallacy Of Utilitarian Compensation Without Agreement

542.   The Fallacy Of Utilitarian Compensation Without Agreement

This continues entry 541.  

Two persons, of whom one calculates the total costs and benefits by one calculation, while the other considers pain and pleasure as independent, are a mismatch with tragic consequences.   Their basic attitudes concerning harming and hurting are incompatible.

Whenever a person is principally willing to control and restrict the own behavior for the purpose of not risking to destroy the relationship by impeding the partner's happiness, there are two options.   These option differ fundamentally in the very disparate attitude towards what constitutes happiness or unhappiness.  

• Option 1:  Happiness is defined as the difference between being hurt and being pampered, it is calculated as pleasure provided minus pain inflicted.   The more a man feels entitled to hurt a woman for the benefit of his own pleasures, the more he compensates for this by providing real or ascribed pleasures to the woman. 
  This is demonstrated in the plot of the classical Hollywood couple, where the man feels entitled to cheat, as long as he buys enough diamonds and fur coats to the wife, whose acquiescence to his transgressions can be thus bought. 
   
• Option 2:  Happiness is defined as the absence of unhappiness caused by harming and hurting behavior.   A man intending to keep a woman needs to focus all his efforts on not making her unhappy, and this requires for him to know or to learn, how to avoid hurting her.   Not being hurt is the most important ingredient of being happy.  
  As long as he does not hurt her, the man does not need to do anything else to please her.   
  In this option, transgressions can never be compensated for.   Not forgiven transgressions destroy the relationship.   Acquiescence with transgressions is not available, only forgiveness earned by the transgressor's genuine and sincere guilt, contrition, amends and full recognition of his obligation to never repeat the transgression.  

When both partners are a match concerning the preferred option, each of the options can work for them.

But conflicts are unavoidable, whenever one person - usually the man - applies option 1 upon a woman needing option 2.  

In this case, a spiral of deterioration is automatically initiated, when the woman feels hurt by the man's specific behaviors.   She defines and experiences as transgressions, what he feels entitled to do.    Without even any agreement as to what are transgressions, they are a mismatch, and the spiral of deterioration is the logical consequence.  
It starts, when he usurps, coerces or enforces his own advantages and privileges from and upon the disagreeing woman, feeling entitled to them.    She experiences being hurt for his selfish benefits as abuse, but he disagrees.   

Getting aware of her disagreement and resistance are for him no sufficient reasons to stop his transgressions.   Nevertheless he does not want to risk driving her away, so while he refuses to renounce the benefits gained by the transgression, he instead attempts to eliminate her unwelcome reactions to his behavior by any form of compensation, which is easier for him than changing his behavior.   
Believing that pleasing her enough would suffice to be able to continue his transgressions, he bends backwards in doing and overdoing things for her, which he believes to be sufficient to please her.       
But this does not work as he expects and as he feels it to be his due.   She continues to feel hurt, because he continues his hurting behavior and his commodifying attitude of feeling entitled to hurt her.   Nothing he does and tries has any effect, as long as he does not give up the commodification and the hurting.   
The next step of deterioration is his getting angry and frustrated for not getting the expected appreciation of and gratitude for what he does for her.   In his subjective experience, he is paying for her acquiescence to how he treats her, but she does not deliver the goods.    She does not feel any gratitude, because she clearly distinguishes between what someone does for the real and sole purpose of pleasing her and what someone merely does for the purpose of buying her submission to being hurt.    This purpose devalues anything of what he does for her, no matter how much she would enjoy it otherwise.          
Yet he believes to have paid and thus he feels justified to continue transgressing.   This is another turn of the spiral of deterioration.   Wanting nothing except the termination of being hurt and abused, every new or repeated transgressions makes her more unhappy, completely unimpressed by his unasked for compensations.  All the man's intensified efforts to compensate are in vain, making him more and more angry and even feeling hurt himself. 


A deal is only a deal between (at least) two persons agreeing.    When someone wants an items owned by his neighbor, throwing any amount of money at his neighbor does not make it a deal to buy the item, as long as the neighbor refuses to sell.    

It is the same with the compensation:  It would only be a deal with the partner's agreement.   But what one person wishes and wants does not suffice to make it a deal.    A woman's acquiescence with being hurt cannot be bought from her with not matter what pampering and unasked for compensatory pleasures, if her acquiescence is not available for sale.    

536. Peripherisation And The Lack Of Intellectual Intimacy

536.    Peripherisation And The Lack Of Intellectual Intimacy

Commodification and objectification are blatantly painful for many women, and the resulting deterioration and destruction of the relationship is usually a fast and unavoidable process. 

But there is another detrimental asymmetrical attitude, which is more subtly painful while less blatant and obvious.   It is the peripherisation of a woman's place and role in a man's life.  
In the best case, this is quite different from the full degradation by commodification.  
Peripherisation does not exclude a man to be considerate and responsible by exclusive monogamous commitment enabling physical and emotional intimacy with her as a person.   But she is not allowed the mental closeness of the bond of intellectual intimacy.   Her place is restricted to the periphery of his inner self and his cognitive life.   Therefore I call this peripherisation.   


Intellectual intimacy means to me:

• Experiencing the joy of consent and agreement. 
  This joy is not someone's agreement with what I have been saying.   It is also not the agreement after me influencing someone to change his mind and thereafter to agree with me.    It is the joy of someone saying, what I agree with, before he even knows, what I think, while he is still ignorant of my agreement.    It is the expression of him and me innately and independently thinking alike.  
  Once I can be reasonably certain, that what someone says or does is a genuine and sincere expression of his personality, and there is consent, then I experience every repetition as an intellectual hug.  
  Such intellectual hugs are to me as important and as enjoyable as are physical hugs.  
  
  
• Psychological bonding.
  Psychological bonding means that the shared discovering, exploring, reflecting and revealing concerning the innermost personality of both partners is experienced as a source of joy and of fascination.   Spending time communicating about the dynamics of the relationship, the interactions, the reasons for behaving and for reacting in a specific way is experienced by both partners as rewarding. 
  The benefit of such communication is the reduction of misunderstanding, wrong assumptions, ambiguities, suspicions, insecurities.  This contributes to the growth of reliability, trust and predictability.  Therefore it is an important activity towards making the relationship a safe haven. 
  I experience the partner's interest in the dynamics and quality of the relationship and his motivation to communicate as a very important intellectual expression of affection. 
• Intellectual pleasures.
  Passive participation in and exposure to events and sources of intellectual quality are not much more than high level consumption, if this does not lead to someone also experiencing active reflecting and pondering about the intellectual stimulation as a pleasure. 
  Sharing activities like watching movies and theater plays or visiting museums and exhibitions together does not enhance intellectual intimacy, unless it is followed by the exchange of thoughts and impressions as a shared pleasure, which enhances the experience of such events for both partners. 
  Not only can another person point out additional unnoticed aspects and creative thoughts.   As a side effect, it also provides additional occasions to experience the joy of consent, whenever the partner expressed the same reaction as is the own. 
   

I consider and experience any relationship without intellectual intimacy as worthless.  

Intellectual intimacy makes the difference between being used and being appreciated.  


When a woman needs and wishes intellectual intimacy, but a man does not provide or offer it, this can have many reasons:

1. It is just one facet of commodification and objectification.
2. He is not a match for her, because he lacks sufficient intelligence and/or education.
3. He is not a match for her, because while there is the potential of his having the cognitive qualities and abilities, he experiences the behaviors for creating and maintaining intellectual intimacy as stress, burdensome, unpleasant.   He is not motivated to do, what he perceives as the contrary of joy.       
4. One of several varieties of peripherisation impedes intellectual intimacy.   Each different aspect or facet of what in combination could constitute the intellectual intimacy in a relationship is felt as a need or motivation to share it.   But what should be an important ingredient of a relationship is shared instead with others as substitutes.   They can be coworkers, friends, buddies, family of origin.
   
   

   Peripherisation 1:
   
   Intellectual intimacy with a woman is impeded by the fallacy of the man's ignorance or unawareness of its existence as an option and of its importance for women.   The man deprives himself of the benefits of intellectual intimacy by not pursuing it as it is beyond his imagination,
   
   This can be due to men's general underestimation and prejudices concerning women's cognitive capacities or to the man's definition of the purpose of a relationship as an interaction restricted to the realm of his need of homeostasis and his pursuit of easy pleasures.   
   
   Usually both fallacies, the underestimation of women and their limited role in a man's life are reinforcing each other.
   
   Peripherisation 2:
   
   A man has chosen a woman too much by the instinctive attraction of her body.   For reasons in himself, for example ignorance, misinterpretation, misunderstandings, overreaction to bad experience, distorted perception, he is not able to trust her or to appreciate her qualities.  
   
   Even when they have both the wish and the potential for intellectual intimacy, he is the obstacle.   (There are also many female obstacles, for examples breeders pursuing a man only as a provider.  But this is outside the scope of this topic.) 

Finding a mindmate for shared intellectual intimacy is difficult, because it requires someone, 

• who is cognitive able
• who enjoys it
• for whom the mate in a relationship is his first choice of the person to seek intellectual intimacy with, while anybody else can never be more than an insufficient substitute.  

This is rare and hard to find.   When I am reading men's profiles on matchmaking sites, I am looking for clues for the probability of intellectual intimacy.    

This will be the topic of another entry.  

534. The Pseudo-Evidence Fallacy

534.   The Pseudo-Evidence Fallacy

Whenever someone bases the decision, how to treat another person, on a belief, which is so strong, that it impedes and overrides the rational perception and comprehension of evidence and reality, there are more or less fatal consequences for at least the misjudged person, often for both. 

Examples:

1. A very drastic example was the alleged proof of who is a witch by throwing the unfortunate victim into the water to see if she floated or drowned.    Men believed in this cruel irrationality, even though their brain had nevertheless enabled them to become fluent in Latin.   
2. In some cultures, parents not only decide, whom to marry their children to, but they choose an alleged match following an astrologer's advice.   This has certainly caused millions of people to suffer from being tied for a lifetime to a mismatch, the worst fate being that of women being abused by a man, whom they would not have chosen.  
3. Today people are less prone to fall for very blatant irrationality.  But the more the irrational claims and beliefs mimic science, the more people are gullible to mistake pseudo-science for science.   
   NLP is a good example.   In entry 177 (The Jerks' Fascination with NLP) I already elaborated, why NLP is a belief system, and why this blend of some elements from scientific psychology with irrational and unscientific claims make this so attractive to people with a distorted self-concept as if being rational.  

In these as also in many more examples, there is a pattern of a specific fallacy:  

The person

• bases a rational decision process upon incorrect or insufficient information acquired by absurd, weird, preposterous or insane methods.   
• is unperceptive, mindblind, immune to or otherwise not impacted by any information coming directly from the target of the behavior.   The target has no influence upon what information is used to determine, how s/he is treated.
• imposes the decision upon the target or attempts to, feeling entitled and justified to do so. 

This fallacy impedes trust and as a consequence it impedes a relationship from becoming a safe haven, which is impossible without trust justified by trustworthiness.   
Trustworthiness can only be assessed by the rational method of evaluating evidence.  This method compares all of someone's verbal and non-verbal expressions and behaviors at any moment with all of this at any another time, and also with external independent sources.   
The more often this comparison is consistent, congruent and without contradictions, the more the person's overall trustworthiness can be estimated as probable.   Never discovering a lie is a part of this.

Any other method, which relies on unverified and unverifiable clues, is a hazard and misleading.   Earning trust depends not only on the own trustworthy behavior, it also depends upon the partner's ability to recognize trustworthy behavior as such by the correct perception of evidence.    Trust cannot be earned from a person using unsuitable methods.  

An honest person never lying is nevertheless not trusted by a partner using flawed methods to evaluate honesty.   The delusion of being able to rely upon firmly believed pseudo-clues makes him oblivious of reality.      
Fools believing in NLP derive the pseudo-evaluation of alleged honesty or lack thereof from the target's eye movements.   This is a hazardous fallacy, as the study quoted below clearly shows.    Eye movements can be caused, influenced and diverted by many triggers.  During any conversation, people's attention can be easily caught momentarily by events at the periphery of their vision.   
The haphazard location of such events suffices to determine the erroneous attribution of an alleged trait towards one of two errors:      
Accidental eye movements of a honest person can forfeit the chance to be trusted.  
The blind believer in NLP can also easily be mislead to trust by a liar's accidental eye movements.  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120711205943.htm

"For decades many NLP practitioners have claimed that when a person looks up to their right they are likely to be lying, whilst a glance up to their left is indicative of telling the truth."

"Professor Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire, UK) and Dr Caroline Watt (University of Edinburgh, UK) tested this idea by filming volunteers as they either lied or told the truth, and then carefully coded their eye movements.  In a second study another group of participants was asked to watch the films and attempt to detect the lies on the basis of the volunteers' eye movements.

"The results of the first study revealed no relationship between lying and eye movements, and the second showed that telling people about the claims made by NLP practitioners did not improve their lie detection skills,” noted Wiseman. "

The pseudo-evidence fallacy and commodification share the common defective acquisition of information.    In both situations, the target is excluded from being considered as a possible source when choosing, which information is used for the decision how to behave.  Both situations indicate depreciation and disrespect of the target, but it works differently.

In the case of commodification, the target is mistaken for a passive utility in a onesided relationship and therefore not considered as able to be a proactive source supplying any information.  
The pseudo evidence fallacy disregards, devalues and rejects the information input coming directly from the target.   The real information is noticed but replaced by the false beliefs.   The target is considered as a proactive source of irrelevant or worthless information.